Phil has famously said he has allergies and bad lungs because Linda smoked while pregnant. That could explain some of the brain damage and underdevelopment.
Which is really funny because how many people famously took bad bodies and made them work. Teddy Roosevelt was born in pretty bad shape, and the man lived through being shot. As well as continuing his speech. As well as some more personal examples. Once again, Phil will see a way out, and run with it. Although maybe most infuriating, is then pretend he also is above it. Like, he has a bad back, that precludes him from driving. But still can do 25 pushups in 25 seconds.
But the reason I started talking, is I want to talk about why he got big. And how his direct capture wasn't even ideal then.
Like, if you weren't around Youtube way back when, there is something you should know. It had a 10 minute limit. Which meant that doing an entire video game was really chunked up. Even an hour long video game like say Sonic, was gonna be in 6+ parts. Now that kind of worked, but get any longer and it got really annoying. I'm not even sure if playlists existed quite yet.
Now, add in that capture cards were "expensive". Kinda hard to come by too. This meant that you had two options. Film your TV, as webcams were actually hitting peak cheapness. Or play something that could be on your computer. Like emulating old games.
So, these two points synthesized adds up to what happened. It wasn't LPs that were everywhere on Youtube. It was AVGN clones, but then that kinda melted away to "reviewers". I don't have hard numbers, but when I think back to that time, thats what I remember most on Youtube gaming. And I can back it up in two ways. One, the complaints about "who would watch a guy play a whole video game, wouldn't that ruin the whole game for you?" started up later than Youtube's start. I remember it more with Game Grumps and PewDiePie. (Christ Chrome autocorrect fixed his name for me...)
Two, there are some old channels, Yahtzee comes to mind that have like clips of games. This is because LPers didn't play the whole game on video. Instead, they'd type it out, but then record the really interesting bits they felt should be in motion. Which in case if you ever wonder about Slowbeef's part in the vortex. For the famous sites that were doing LPs, Something Awful and later LP archive. He was the first to do a whole game, The Immortal, in video. As it was a fairly short game, and it was better to explain in motion.
Now, that finally brings us to DarksydePhil. (Look at that, Chrome doesn't autocorrect his name) What DSP did was fill a niche. A niche left open because anyone with pride in their work thought it was shit. As well as it did require some money and stubborness. But that was, he played new games. All the way through. In 10 minute chunks. Recorded off his TV. Also, just because I am being needlessly thorough, at this point, PC was kinda dead. Like no one was bringing big AAA games to PC. They existed sure, and I was a PC gamer at that time. The kinda stuff people wanted to see was either console exclusive, or ran like shit on PC. Or was so resource intensive that recording it too was gonna be hard. Which means, that yeah, DSP actually was the first to bring big new games completely to Youtube. It was for a good reason no one fucking did that. But, he did it. And there were people who were gonna watch it. Because also that "new gen" was actually relatively expensive.
So DSP was a sweaty pollock oasis in a content desert for people who wanted to see all of the hot new game. Even weirder, was that he wasn't even the laziest. Retsupurae showed that people were willing to watch that shit and make that shit, but no one was willing to make the camcorder look, uh lookable. DSP at least centered it.
Now as you should all know. He quickly stopped being the only one doing that. Things started to catch up. Capture cards got cheaper. Computers got better at recording AAA games that were more frequently coming to PC. And as you all know he got left behind. He had momentum. Having a fan base is a big deal in youtube. But then he gave himself his negative views by deleting shit. And that was it. He was behind, he stopped coasting on his momentum, and now he begs for money from the few dent heads that still support him.
Thats the actual legacy of DSP. I've always wanted to make that into a video, but that was always to autistic for me. So, if someone wants to use it go ahead. Dedicate it to Phil. It should really salt his pork.
